In a green initiative, the Railways is tapping a mix of technologies to ensure environment-friendly discharge of the human waste from trains.
In a green initiative, the Railways is tapping a mix of technologies to ensure environment-friendly discharge of the human waste from trains. It has made elaborate plans to scale up the green initiatives in the next two years to tackle the large-scale human waste from 45,000 trains that run nation-wide daily.
The technologies being deployed by the railway are bio toilets, which will use bacterial strains, zero discharge system, and vaccum suction.
As per an Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad estimate, at least 3,00,000 litres of human waste is generated every day by passengers travelling in trains.
The ministry has developed the bio-toilets in co-ordination with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
“The technology uses a culture of several bacterial strains that convert waste into gas and liquid. The liquid, which is odour free and corrossion free is then discharged,” said an official source.
175 such toilets are already in use on the railway network. The bacterial strains that are used for this are from Antarctica.
According to the source, a total of 500 such toilets will be put to use by March. In 2011-12, this will be scaled up to 2,500. “For the purpose, almost eight to ten depots have been identified for installation in various zones,” said the source.
The system is already working in three trains, Gwalior-Varanasi-Bundelkhand express, Guwahati-Chennai express, and New Delhi-Rewa express.
The second technology, zero discharge, is being developed in co-operation with Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Trials have been conducted for this and order has been placed for one rake, which means 56 toilets.
In this, a liquid-solid separator will separate water from the solid waste, that can be recycled for flushing purposes in the train.
Another technology that is being considered is based on vaccum suction like in aircraft. To begin with, this will be used in Shatabdis, for which global tenders for procurement have already been floated.
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